As you sit in the plane reading these words, I wonder if you have ever considered turning up at an airport and not going anywhere? It seems, perhaps, a strange question to ask. Airports are, after all, a transitory experience, one that must be undergone before access is granted to the skies and whatever – or wherever – awaits on touchdown. Yet the airport has a life and identity of its own, one that endures regardless of the mundane fact that you have left it behind. The airport is a city in microcosm. Within its perimeters, all civilised thirsts may be assuaged. And some uncivilised ones, too.
I am sitting in the Library bar of the Sofitel Hotel at Terminal 5 with around 15 other people who have nothing much in common except that we dream of terminals as an end in themselves. The event is a weekend break at Heathrow Airport, organised by The School of Life, and presided over by Alain de Botton, the philosopher of choice for those who don’t do head-scratching philosophy. Set up by a bunch of brainy people who, quite rightly, believe we don’t get as much out of life as we should, The School of Life has a bookshop in Bloomsbury and offers courses and mini-breaks focusing on topics that emphasise how to make the most of our minds and live more fulfilling lives.
And so, here we are on holiday – our bodies are not going anywhere, but our minds are about to undertake a journey.
The Sofitel Hotel is worthy of comment. It is a vast building, umbilically linked to Terminal 5. There are 600 rooms here, each of them a monument to modern ingenuity. As are the lifts. I spent five minutes in one, stabbing at my floor button. It was like being in an Edgar Allan Poe story, except that the tomb was transparent. Eventually, someone came to my aid, explaining that the room card must be used to activate the mechanism of lifting and lowering.
I reached the room, to be confronted with a lighting control panel that defied my best efforts at illumination. I was not alone in this quandary: a little bird told me that the lighting system will be replaced, owing to widespread perplexity. The rooms are otherwise irreproachable, featuring sumptuous beds and a bathroom full of toiletries, kindly supplied by Hermès.
Back in the Library bar, Alain de Botton is charmingly urging everyone to introduce themselves. I retain none of the biographical information freely offered up, other than the fact that everyone is pleased to be here. One piece of hard information is gathered in: when a person has passed through all the checks and balances of security, they are ‘airside’, which means they are ‘clean’; those who have not are ‘landside’, or ‘dirty’. We are all ‘landside’ and the only option is to revel in the metaphorical muck.
Go to the next page for paper airplane making and airline meal photography.
